Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Lameen Souag Profile picture
Lameen Souag
@lameensouag
Linguist at LACITO, @CNRS (views mine, not theirs). Language change+contact in northern Africa: Berber, Songhay, Arabic... Old blog: https://t.co/inuayaEeKo
Apr 20, 2020 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
The year is 1351. Ibn Battuta, the furthest-ranging traveller of the medieval world, has turned his path towards Mali. In Sijilmasa, Morocco's gateway to the inland Sahara, he joins a caravan heading for Taghaza, led by Abu Muhammad Yendekan of the Masufa tribe... Taghaza is "a no-good town", treeless and fly-infested, whose houses are built of salt blocks and roofed with camel-hide. Only slaves live there, belonging to the Masufa. They dig salt, which is sold south for great sums, and live off camel meat, Moroccan dates, and Malian millet
Mar 29, 2020 • 17 tweets • 6 min read
Tabelbala, stretching tenuously between the vast sand seas and the barren basalt hills, the only oasis in the northern Sahara whose language - Korandje - comes from sub-Saharan Africa

tawərbət "Tabelbala"
kʷạṛa n dzyəy "village's language = Korandje" First mentioned by the Catalan polymath Raymond Lull in 1285, Tabelbala used to be a link in the high medieval caravan routes bringing gold from Mali to Morocco and Spain

(Pic from the Catalan Atlas, 1375)